


Alone again

by warlock_of_high_hell



Series: From Remus' perspective [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Hurt, I don't know why I write this stuff, I personally hate it when the main character dies, M/M, Remus ends up alone, Sad, Sad Ending, Yet I always do this whenever I write anything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:14:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24019582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/warlock_of_high_hell/pseuds/warlock_of_high_hell
Summary: In the battle of the ministry, what was Remus really thinking when his best friend and lover, Sirius Black, fell through the veil?(Apologies for sucking at summaries)
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Series: From Remus' perspective [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1737274
Kudos: 8





	Alone again

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies if there are any spelling mistakes/inconsistencies - I use the English way of spelling things but my autocorrect is set to the american versions.

“Come on, you can do better than that!” 

Remus knew who uttered the words before he looked around – there was only one man he knew who would taunt Bellatrix with a shout. 

He had ducked the first blast of red and this seemed to have given him newfound confidence – unfound confidence as the next blast hit him in the chest. 

There was still a laughter in his face, although his eyes had widened with shock, and though Remus moved to help him, thoughts running through his head, different spells – different curses he could use – but it didn’t matter. 

Time seemed to stop as Sirius fell back. His body glided through the air taking an age and a half, the laugh still plastered on his face like a poor paper mask, the product of some forgotten joke. 

Fear and surprise mingled on the handsome face of his lover as he fell through the veil, tearing Remus’ heart in two. The veil fluttered for a moment or two as though it were in some sort of high wind, and then it fell silent. 

Remus could hear his heartbeat in the silence that followed. 

He tried to convince himself that this was just some ordinary arch, that at any moment Padfoot would come around and laughing and send off a curse to Bellatrix and that would be the end of it. He couldn’t die now – not with Dumbledore just having arrived and the death eaters scrambling to get away. 

But the seconds dragged on, and Sirius didn’t reappear. 

Remus’ breath was bated as he desperately tried to convince him that his lover wasn’t dead – that he wasn’t gone just after he had gotten him back a little under two years ago – that he would still see his wide smile and his handsome face again.

“SIRIUS!” He heard a voice yell, and looked around numbly. “SIRIUS!” Harry yelled, and Remus’ heart sped up as he realised the young man was in just as much denial as he was, cared about Sirius just as he did, albeit in a different way. 

Harry began to sprint to the dais and Remus realised what he was going to do – what he himself was seconds away from doing – and without a second thought sprinted after him, the same thought repeating itself over and over in his head – that he couldn’t lose what little of James he had left. Not just after he had lost Sirius. 

He grabbed Harry and held him around the chest, afraid of what he would do if he didn’t hold him back. Afraid that they would both run beyond the veil. Sirius wouldn’t have wanted that – he would have told him that it was stupid, that he still had things to live for, that Harry still had his life to live. So he held Harry tight – no matter how hard or violently he struggled. 

“There’s nothing you can do, Harry -”

“Get him, save him, he’s only just gone through!” The boy’s words resonated with the thoughts screaming through his head, and he held Harry tighter. There was no point in them all dying, he tried to tell himself. Harry still had his friends, and his life to live. And Remus, he still had – no, he couldn’t think that. He had to have something – even if the rest of the marauders were dead. 

“- it’s too late, Harry.” He said, but he didn’t know who he was saying the words to. Harry wasn’t listening to him, and they seemed shallow to his ears. 

“We can still reach him -” Harry’s desperation was about to break Remus’ heart even more, and he renewed his struggle fresh with vigour. He refused to let go though, refused to let the last bit of Prongs and Lily run through the veil and not return.  
“There’s nothing you can do, Harry… nothing…” He said, his words feeling like a death sentence. “He’s gone.”

“He hasn’t gone!” Harry yelled, and Remus felt his heart break even further at the desperation in his voice, the stubbornness of James and the fierce determination of Lily.

“SIRIUS!” He bellowed. “SIRIUS.”

“He can’t come back, Harry.” Remus found his voice breaking as he said the words aloud, adding a sense of finality to them. He didn’t want to accept this – he wanted to fight as Harry was doing. Wanted to run beyond the veil and embrace his lover as he wouldn’t be able to do as long as he was alive and Sirius was – his heart broke in a million new ways as he realized what the future held. What the future didn’t hold, and suddenly he longed for it to be over. He wanted to see James’ laugh again, and see Lily’s beautiful smile, and Sirius flick his hair out of the way, a permanent grin plastered on his face. He wanted to be with his friends in a way that had been denied to them because of Voldemort, and he wanted to spend the rest of eternity happy and free with them.

But he couldn’t – the look Prongs would give him if he voluntarily ran through the veil – if he let Prongs Jr run through the veil. He couldn’t let Harry throw the life he had here away. “He can’t come back, because he’s d-”

“HE – IS – NOT – DEAD!” Harry roared, and Remus fought against Harry’s unrelenting struggle with everything he had to stop himself from going after his Padfoot. “SIRIUS!”

Light flashed around them, and Remus cursed himself for not realising that the battle was still going on around them. There was no point in saving Harry from following Padfoot beyond the veil if he was just going to be hit by a deflected curse and go beyond it anyway. 

He dragged him away from the dais, dragging his eyes away from the accursed veil to Harry, who was still fixated on the archway, growing angrier by the minute. 

Suddenly Harry seemed to deflate in his arms, as though he too had realised that Padfoot wasn’t coming back – that he wasn’t going to come gallivanting around the corner of the archway. Remus found that he could finally breathe despite the weight in his chest – a weight he wasn’t sure was ever going to go away – and looked around the battle to see what else was going on. 

Kingsley had taken Padfoot’s place – not replaced him, just continued his fight with the bastard Lestrange. If he hadn’t had Harry in his arms he would have run over there and taken over from Kingsley, letting loose all of his pent-up anger and frustration on her. Part of him hoped that Kingsley would finish her – that she didn’t deserve to live while his Padfoot was dead. The three words hit him like a wave of rocks and he felt his heart shatter again as he wondered in a daze how he had anything left to break. 

“Harry?” A voice said, and Remus looked over. It was Neville – one of Harry’s classmates. He wondered what the boy was doing here, never having been particularly good at defence against the dark arts. 

Remus realised Harry was no longer struggling against him, but he still kept a hand on the boy’s arm in case he tried to do something stupid later. 

“Harry… I’b really sorry…” The boy said. The words felt as though they were an eternity away, as though he was hearing them from underwater. He noticed that the boy’s legs were dancing uncontrollably, and searched for a spell that might make it stop. It seemed to take an age to find one; the boy had continued to talk. Harry nodded to the last sentence of whatever he had said, and Remus raised his wand. 

“Here,” He said quietly, feeling as though his voice was about to break and tears were threatening to fall. But he couldn’t have a breakdown here – not when there was still a battle going on around them and Harry needed him. “Finite.” He said, and as Neville’s legs fell still he wondered why it had taken him so long to find such a simple spell. “Let’s – let’s find the others. Where are they all, Neville?”

Simple sentences were all he could manage. Simple sentences were good – that meant he was talking without breaking down. He could focus on more complex sentences later – when he hadn’t just lost the love of his life, and there weren’t spells flying all over the place.

He looked away from the archway as Neville began to talk – he hadn’t even realised he had gone back to staring at it – and tried to ignore the black hole of the room that was trying to suck him in.  
“Dey’re all back dere,” He said. “A brain addacked Ron bud I dink he’s alrighd – and Herbione’s unconscious, bud we could feel a bulse –”

In this state he could only understand half of what Neville was saying, the other half flying right over his head. A loud bang caught his attention and he looked over to see Kingsley hit the ground, yelling in pain. His heart gave a twang as he watched the witch – he couldn’t even think her name – turn and run like the coward she was as Dumbledore whipped around. He threw a spell which she deflected with ease, and was halfway up the stairs as Remus loosened his grip on Harry, preparing to fire his own spells at her. Dumbledore would never kill her – he was too forgiving. If Kingsley couldn’t beat her – then it was up to him to seek vengeance for Padfoot. He couldn’t let her get away this easily – 

Something else grabbed his attention, and he looked down to see Harry ripping his arm from his slackened grip and running after Bellatrix. “Harry – no!” He cried, but it was too late. Part of him was relieved that it was Harry going after her – he would be able to finish this. The feeling was swamped by guilt in a second – he was just a child, and the bastard had stopped Kingsley. He wouldn’t have stood a chance if he was anyone else – but he was Prongs’ son.  
“SHE KILLED SIIRUS!” He bellowed. “SHE KILLED HIM – I’LL KILL HER.”

He was off before anyone could stop him – people were shouting all around them, but Remus was still swimming with his head underwater. Harry disappeared out of the room and suddenly everything was cold – colder than Remus had ever been. He had been glad when Sirius had shown up – glad that he had a familiar fighter on his side, that he was doing this with one of his friends. Now bile rose up in his throat as he remembered that – and wished Padfoot had never come. 

The fight continued around him, but he was lost in the sea of noise. Neville sat next to him in silence as the tensions of the battle heightened. Remus was tempted to walk into the middle of the hall and wait for a deflected curse to hit him, so he could join Padfoot again, greet him with an embrace he would never have again. 

Dumbledore and Voldemort were engaged in some sort of fight, but Remus couldn’t hear the words they were saying, and for that he was glad. He’d had enough of caring – enough of fighting. What was the point when you lost everyone in the end? His best friends – his lover – all gone. 

For the first time since he was eleven – not even when Padfoot was in Azkaban, because he knew he would escape, you couldn’t keep someone like Sirius locked up forever – he felt well and truly alone.


End file.
